Women Were the Trending Topic of the Games

U.S. gymnast Gabby Douglas waves from the medal stand as Russian gymnast and bronze medallist Aliya Mustafina stands beside her in this Aug. 2 photo. Douglas enjoyed the largest percentage increase in social media mentions during the 2012 Summer Games. Photo: Gregory Bull/AP

Who were the most talked-about athletes in the 2012 Summer Games?

If we’re talking daily mentions across the most active social media networks, that honor goes to Michael Phelps, Gabby Douglas, Usain Bolt, Ryan Lochte, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings. Pretty predictable, as they were some of the biggest winners at the Games.

A more striking measure of social media success is the percentage of increase in mentions. Content-sharing platform AddThis calculated the number of mentions (.jpg) athletes received in the two weeks before the Olympics, then tracked the mentions they received during the 2012 Summer Games. That yielded some interesting results.

The five athletes with the greatest percentage increase in mentions were women, most of whom didn’t have a large fan base prior to the Games. That suggests they captured the hearts of sports fans the world over as the Olympics went on.

Unfortunately, people were as likely to discuss their physical appearance as their athletic prowess.

Without a doubt, the 2012 Summer Games — often hailed as the “year of the woman” — were monumental for women of all nations and cultures. For the first time, every country participating in the Games had at least one female athlete in London. The inclusion of women’s boxing meant women were, for the first time, competing in every event at the Games. Nearly 45 percent of the 10,500-plus athletes were women.

It was against this backdrop that medal winners Gabby Douglas, Jordyn Wieber, Missy Franklin, Aly Raisman and Walsh Jennings dominated the social media conversation. Douglas — the first African-American gymnast to win the individual all-around gold medal — led the way with a staggering 31,234 percent increase in mentions. She also won the title of “Most-Clicked Athlete” on NBCOlympics.com, crushing Phelps by more than 11 million views.

But unfortunately, that rapid rise in internet popularity isn’t exclusively due to their athletic skills and Olympic victories. The Social Media Report produced by AddThis doesn’t provide the context of these online conversations, so we wondered how much of the increase in mentions can be attributed to trolls tweeting about Douglas’ hair or commenting on how Walsh Jennings looks in a bikini.

Gabby Douglas saw the largest percentage increase in social media mentions during the Games. This word cloud from AddThis shows her hair was discussed about as frequently as her sport.

After checking out the terms most often associated with each of the top five female athletes, it seems we were right to be suspicious. Douglas’ hair was discussed about as frequently as her sport. Wieber’s elimination was a hot topic, but so were her “hot” and “stunning” looks. And apparently a lot of people were searching for “pics” of Raisman and asking if she’s single.

None of this surprises Douglas Warshaw, former NBC Olympics producer and founder of First-Person Communications.

“To a certain degree, you have a lot of young girls following the gymnasts, which is a big deal, but there’s also the ‘hottest women of the Olympics’ thing, and the sex appeal of the increasingly tight uniforms is not to be dismissed,” he says. “But I think women athletes resonate the most with us because they don’t get the coverage day in and day out in between the Games. So there’s something novel about the way that they’re covered during the Olympics, and that adds to their appeal. When they get on this incredible stage and they do things that reveal themselves emotionally and through their physicality, it is as dramatic as television gets.”

So true. Some of the words used in the discussion are troubling, but the numbers show that women in sports is a trending topic, and that’s good news.